Darkfall: Unholy Wars – Worst Announcement Ever

I got a fun little email this morning stating that, yup, Darkfall: Unholy Wars is a thing.  And that’s pretty much all it said. For those who don’t know, Darkfall is a pretty neat, action-combat MMORPG that features full looting, an active skill system, and a distinctly old-school approach to just about every game system. Plus large scale PvP, yo. Back to the expansion, or patch, or re-release — whatever this is exactly is still unclear.

Oh good, a website to answer our questions!

Here’s a paragraph of lore to set the scene:

Agon, a land that has suffered hundreds of years of divine vengeance and demonic conspiracy, has been given a moment of relief. After declaring war on each other and mortals alike, the Demon and the Goddess have pulled back to reorganize and assemble their forces. If ever there was a time for the mortal races to regroup, reclaim the lands and rise to power, it is now!

Is it just me, or did they just write away a whole game and say “come back because nothing’s happening”? That’s kind of what it looks like. Aventurine has a pretty terrible track record on updates, so I’m not sure if I should be surprised or nodding sagely that this is their draw.  It does look like they’re planning on resetting land ownership, though. Something might happen, sometime, but until fight over this stuff you already had.

A features list! Surely this will tell us what they’re planning!

KEY FEATURES

• Massive Land and Naval PvP Battles: Thousands of players can participate simultaneously in wars and sieges on land and sea, in real-time, on a single server.
• A Huge, Seamless World: The world of Agon is a large open world that consists of both land and water and gives the freedom to players to uncover its hidden secrets.
• Flexible Roles: Choose role at will, switching from meat shield to master mage to benevolent healer. Players can switch between roles, skills, spells, and ability boosters on the fly. Develop your skills in all roles and experience the game in a multitude of different ways over time or specialize in a single role and be the one your friends depend on to fulfill that calling.
• Full Loot: You keep what you kill. Players can loot all of the goods from a slain enemy, and vice versa.
• Persistence: Players can affect the fabric of the game world, constructing and fortifying cities across Agon and building empires that last as long as they can defend them.

So… Darkfall? It is a terrible, terrible sign when the only thing you can announce about your “new game” is that’s it’s the old game. What exactly is being announced? A sub-title? That a patch is coming Soon^TM? We’ve known that. It’s actually been “over two years in the making.”

Okay, okay. Let’s not get out of hand. There’s a video. Let’s have a look.

Most uninformative dev video in recent memory. Seriously. You know what they revealed there? Wait for it… Unholy Wars… is… a… THING! Holy crow, stop the presses, and slap you mother with an oven mitt! A THING did you hear?! Oh yeah, and something about sieges and remembering critics’ names. But a THING! Someday!

All snark aside, I like Darkfall. It’s a unique, compelling game with a better combat system than almost any other MMO, a huge open world, full looting, and lots of appealing old-school mentalities. Darkfall is the kind of game this genre needs more of both in PvPand PvE. I want them to come out with 2.0 and have it be something so brain-crushingly awesome that the whole world stands up to take notice.

That said, this “announcement” was a complete and unbridled disappointment. If they’re selling a box (are they selling a box?) — or trying to stir up much of anything besides ire,  they need more than “hey guys, remember us? We’re here, in SUBTITLE form.”

Yeah, more details will come (assuming this doesn’t take 2 more years to release), and I’m sure there will be stuff worth getting excited over. Maybe they should have included just one of those in this announcement. Just sayin’.

Syncaine seems to be optimistic, though, which is actually worth more note than anything in the video! Maybe he’ll tell us why better than Tasos.